Harding first-graders make prayer flags for Mount Everest base camp

From The Tennessean – Seven-year-old Megan Murphy described her creation quite simply.

“Well, it had a giraffe and an ocean and some grass. It was pretty. It was a blue flag. It had some peace signs and hearts,” she said. “And that’s about it.”

But the flag she designed and made in her first-grade Harding Academy class last spring must be pretty special, as it, along with her classmates’ creations, is hanging at 17,040 feet in a base camp of Mount Everest.

Megan’s grandmother, Audrey Gonzalez, hung the international prayer flags during her two-month pilgrimage to Nepal and Tibet. Gonzalez was 68 years old and had just undergone a breast cancer operation at the time.

Climbers have to stay at the base camp for a few months to adjust to the altitude before attempting to reach the summit of Everest, Gonzalez said.

The grandmother offered for Kim Rodriguez’s first-grade class to make some of those 60 flags she and her group hung.

Rodriguez said she wanted to show her students they were part of a bigger world.

“They always think of themselves as Nashville, Tennessee,” she said. “It was really neat to have it culminate to that, to see themselves globally and not just as a member of their school and member of their family.”